Page:The Gentle Grafter (1908).djvu/60

 beginning to give me philanthropitis. It was the first time me and Andy had ever made a pile big enough to make us stop and think how we got it.

“‘Andy,’ says I, ‘we’re wealthy—not beyond the dreams of average; but in our humble way we are comparatively as rich as Greasers. I feel as if I’d like to do something for as well as to humanity.’

“‘I was thinking the same thing, Jeff,’ says he. ‘We’ve been gouging the public for a long time with all kinds of little schemes from selling self-igniting celluloid collars to flooding Georgia with Hoke Smith presidential campaign buttons. I’d like, myself, to hedge a bet or two in the graft game if I could do it without actually banging the cymbalines in the Salvation Army or teaching a bible class by the Bertillon system.’

“‘What’ll we do?’ says Andy. ‘Give free grub to the poor or send a couple of thousand to George Cortelyou?’

“‘Neither,’ says I. ‘We’ve got too much money to be implicated in plain charity; and we haven’t got enough to make restitution. So, we’ll look about for something that’s about half way between the two.’

“The next day in walking around Floresville we see on a hill a big red brick building that appears to be disinhabited. The citizens speak up and tell us 48